NYT: The State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, resigned on Sunday, three days after publicly criticizing the Pentagon as “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid” in its treatment of Pfc. Bradley E. Manning…

Mr. Crowley’s comments … stirred a political tempest in Washington and were rejected by President Obama at a news conference on Friday….

White House officials were infuriated by the episode … which one described as “the last straw” in a series of incautious remarks by Mr. Crowley. …he had a rocky tenure at the State Department, failing to establish close ties to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

…Mr. Crowley had been in a tenuous position for some time … and was discussing another assignment with Mrs. Clinton and her chief of staff even before his Manning remarks. He did not travel on Mrs. Clinton’s plane, which is highly unusual for a spokesman and added to the perception that he did not have access to her inner circle.

Public statements from Mr. Crowley raised hackles in the Pentagon and the White House several times. On Friday, in the wake of the earthquake in Japan, he sent out a message on ’Twitter that said: “We’ve been watching a hopeful tsunami sweep across the Middle East. Now we’re seeing a tsunami of a different kind sweep across Japan.” Other officials said the message was insensitive, and Mr. Crowley pulled it from Twitter.

He also came under fire in a State Department audit while managing the public affairs bureau … Last month, Michael Hammer, a former spokesman for the National Security Council, became Mr. Crowley’s deputy — a move that was widely perceived as setting the stage for Mr. Crowley’s departure.

With regards to this hero’s resignation and the Bradley Manning scenario, I’ve decided to just wait – till the eager beavers get to the apology to the President because they didn’t like his comment on ‘ Manning’s torture’ or the fact that he ‘fired’ this guy for ‘speaking the truth’.

I only recently discovered this blog and some of the others on your blogroll, and I’m glad I found them. Like you, I think that the professional left is overboard and often just plain wrong in their criticisms of Obama, and that they’re hurting the Democratic cause in the process. I think Obama has done a very good job with foreign policy, and a pretty damn decent job with domestic policy, despite all the Republican obstructionism he’s had to deal with.

But the one area where I find myself disturbed about Obama is stuff related to civil liberties/war on terror, as with this case. It feels like he’s following too many of Bush’s policies in this area. It’s *because* I really admire him that I wish he were better than this in this arena. Just saying, “military prisoners are always treated like this,” isn’t enough.

That’s not a reason for me not to support him. As some have pointed out on this blog I think, FDR interned the Japanese and made a deal with Southern Senators and Reps to deny a lot of New Deal benefits to blacks in exchange for their support. That doesn’t negate the good he did.

Still, it doesn’t feel good to think that someone I admire is doing something I find reprehensible in one area of his presidency. I wonder what your thoughts are, not just about this but about Obama’s actions in the war on terror in general, and how you deal with it.

I’ll try to give you my honest opinion on the points you made, but I just want to check, are you specifically referring to the Bradley Manning case, or more general civil liberties/’war on terror’ policies?

If it’s the Manning case, then there are definitely aspects of his treatment – if we can assume his statement last week was accurate – that I would strongly object to, even if I believe he deserves to be charged. Even his own father, a former military man, denounced those who leak military intelligence that could do harm to the country’s security. The only ‘leak’ I approved of was that horrific video of innocent Iraqis being murdered – its leaking, to me, was justified, every citizen has a right to know when crimes are being committed in their ‘name’.

But Manning – if it was him who leaked all this stuff – indiscriminately passed thousands upon thousands of classified documents to Julian Assange, who, in my humble opinion, is a deeply shady figure. No nation on earth can tolerate a member of its own military showing that level of reckless and deceitful behavior, it simply puts lives at risk.

But, absolutely, he still has a right to humane treatment while he is in custody. Some of his allegations about his treatment make for uncomfortable reading, but I honestly have yet to read anything that suggests he is being tortured, as his supporters allege. His father, in that PBS interview, said he is “doing well” and “looks good”, and made no suggestion that he is being tortured. Certainly, his father wasn’t happy with his son’s general treatment, and I would absolutely want President Obama to insist that he is treated humanely, but, again, where is the evidence of torture?

As for the President’s record on ‘torture’ – I just re-posted this article from Newsweek: